


A Hundred Arms, A Hundred Years

by linascribbles



Series: Verse [3]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Catholic undertones, Character Study, Inspired by Music, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Relationship Study, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, the inherent homoeroticism of sharing fruit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 03:26:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29343537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linascribbles/pseuds/linascribbles
Summary: “A hundred arms,by which I could have been felled,” he whispers between their gasps, thinking of their first meeting, and Yusuf draws away a little to hear him speak. “And it was yours.” He thinks about their lives so far, “A hundred years, you can always find me here,” he promises.A relationship study from Nicky's POV set to 100 Years by Florence + The Machine
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Verse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2155392
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25





	A Hundred Arms, A Hundred Years

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics are in bold, some lines are slightly reworked to fit the sentences. Of course I recommend you listen to the song before or during this read, might make sense anyways but it's kind of half the experience :)
> 
> A million thanks to [@silvermadi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orientation/pseuds/silvermadi) for her feedback and help, you should all go check out her stuff <3

“I believe it’s destiny, that we’re meant to find each other,” Nicky says to Nile, taking in her frightened eyes that she’s doing such a good job of hiding. Joe gazes at him over the table and winks, eyes as always full of love. 

Nine hundred years and he’d still move Heaven and Earth to earn one of those looks. No matter that Joe is generous with his affection, will sing praise and odes to him with no need for prompting. Love’s the only thing Nicky has found that doesn’t devalue from abundance. 

It brings him back to their origins, to those decades spent figuring themselves out in the middle of a brutal land filled with hate and war.

Yusuf’s words echo in his mind, as old as they are they never seem to fade. By now they should have been well worn and fraying at the edges. He’s revisited them many times over the centuries. And yet, his love renews them with merely a look. It’s all it takes, one look and he’s back to those first decades. Their first century together had been long and too full. Now, a particular conversation comes back to him. He can no longer recall most of the details like the town it was or the year, except that it had been very hot and in a coastal town. 

He gets lost in the memory as he shows Nile to her bed.

He feels the coarse fabric of their old bed in his palm. He just woke up from a nightmare, one where he killed Yusuf and he never resurrected. A world in which he never learned the error of his ways and continued his path of destruction, letting the tide of the times override all his persistent doubts. 

Nicolò heaves, his breath loud in the small room. He’s panicking, the same old terrors fresh again. He’s scared that he’ll never be able to move past the teaching of his youth. He worries that his soul has been forever corrupted by the so-called word of a God which had been turned vengeful and hateful by man’s warped translations.

Yusuf's hands are warm on his wrists as they stop him from tearing out his hair.

“What if it’s never enough?” he whispers, feeling too desolated to raise his voice.

“My love,” Yusuf replies, taking a hand to his lips to kiss. “ **I believe in you and in our hearts we know the truth,”** his eyes shine in the night, as if the starry sky has migrated to his pupils. **“And I believe in love and the darker it gets, the more I do,”** Nicolò’s heart stutters at the word, and his breath catches. Betrayed by his own body he’s unable to speak, to break the spell that Yusuf’s eyes on him seem to always cast. His church would have called him a demon, yet Nicolò knows what a blessing he is.

“What if I can never change? What if _they_ never change? How can we know?” he begs, his usual calm shattered into infinitesimal pieces. _How can I know that with eternity in our future we won’t find ourselves there again?_

Yusuf doesn’t dismiss his fears. For all his romantic notions and poetry, which drove Nicolò to despair on the regular for decades in the desire that they be dedicated to him, he is far from ignorant of the ugly side of life.

“They will **try and fill us with their hate,”** he caresses his thumbs over the sensitive skin of Nicolò's wrist, where the veins are visible and his pulse thunders. He smiles at him, small, secretive and something in Nicolò’s chest feels crushed. “ **And we will shine a light,** so bright it will burn out their darkness **and the days will become endless and never, and never turn to night.”** He chuckles, not unaware of how fanciful it sounds though not for that less earnest in his wishes. Yet Nicolò isn’t laughing, he doesn’t join him in the easiness.

Yusuf has waxed about his eyes from the first day, first insults then praise. At first they were big and bulbous like a toad, later intense and ever changing like the ocean. He’s always mentioned them as intense. Nicolò suspects the way he’s looking at him in that moment then justifies the descriptor. He stares at Yusuf, his mind unable to grasp the scope of their situation. 

In moments like this he regains his sense of destiny, because what else could explain the blessing of Yusuf’s existence if not something holy?

 **“And never turn to night,”** he echoes him, half agreement, half promise before leaning in and sealing it with a kiss.

Yusuf meets him gladly, lips still stretched in a smile, his hands sliding to interlace with his. He squeezes their fingers and **then it’s just too much, he cannot get him close enough.** At the second taste of his lips Nicolò shakes their fingers apart, desperate to feel more of him, to reassure themselves of their love, of the path they’ve chosen and keep choosing with every breath and shared caress.

“ **A hundred arms,** by which I could have been felled,” he whispers between their gasps, thinking of their first meeting, and Yusuf draws away a little to hear him speak. “And it was yours.” He thinks about their lives so far, **“A hundred years, you can always find me here,”** he promises.

Language might fail him as he’s not one for words in the way that Yusuf is, much less in the heat of the moment but it doesn’t matter. He knows his love understands what he’s saying. 

_We can always find ourselves here. This is the centre upon which we’ve built our lives. Now and for as long as our lives last. Until my day comes I’ll be by your side._

* * *

  
  
  


Nights are cold in the desert, too cold to stay out in when you have no cover and no animal to huddle with for warmth. Yet not cold enough for Nicolò to dare ask the only other living thing to creep closer to share body heat. 

There’s little to no chance of bandits attacking them in the night. The terrain might not do anything to hide their fire or offer protection but the road they’re on is scarcely travelled, much less at night when the days still permit movement. There’s no need to stand watch.

He tries to discreetly steal glances at Yusuf as he sketches close to the fire. He’s used to these temperatures, while Nicolò continues to struggle with the harsh changes and unfamiliar weather patterns. He’s taken off his turban for the night. He’d sighed softly at the relief from the pressure, Nicolò had noticed. It now lies unravelled next to him. His curls are matted and in disarray. 

They’re both dirty, tired and in a perpetual state of bloodiness these days yet Nicolò wonders if the strands would be soft in his hands. Would they tangle in his fingers? His beard definitely looks very soft in the light of day. And now, as the fire lights him from the front, his lowered head makes his curls light up like a halo.

 _Why am I here?_ He wonders at a God he’s not sure he is welcomed by in anymore. _Why would you bring him to me, or me to him, when he’s everything I've been taught to hate and nothing like what I've been taught to love?_ He shudders, his hands clenching on the pack he’s been pretending to browse for too long. _Is this a test? I was ready to pledge my life to you for the rest of my days, to vow myself to you, but I can only do so much._ **_And Lord, don't let me break this_** **,** he thinks of the faith that has guided him all his life. That led men to do unspeakable evils he never had seen in the words he read because they never questioned orders. **_Let me hold it lightly._** Yet as the words go over his mind, he shivers from the cold and his mind instantly conjures up an image of how he could avoid it. **_Give me arms to pray with instead of ones that_** _want to_ ** _hold too tightly_** _._

It takes every shred of self-restraint he has to turn down Yusuf’s subtle offer to bundle up together for warmth. He’s not worthy of that, he hasn’t _earned_ comfort. Much less from Yusuf, he doubts he’ll ever be worthy of finding himself in Yusuf’s arms. 

* * *

  
  
  


**“We have no need to fight,”** Joe says, though that’s exactly what they have been doing since that morning. Nicky’s only reply is to stare, purposefully mute given his love hates it when he doesn’t speak. He’s not yet looking for reconciliation. “If you would just _tell_ me.”

A part of him can tell exactly how this will go. It _has_ been 900 years after all. But that doesn’t mean they can simply skip the process. How easy would it be if the knowledge was enough to make the emotions go away. 

He turns around and leaves the room. He’s making dinner and the orderly process will allow him to find the words. The rhythmic thuds of the knife against the chopping board relax his muscles.

 ** _We raise our voices,_** he thinks about their argument, heated and messy as they usually are. _Love makes our tongues loose. We can speak about it for hours_ ** _and let our hearts take flight._** _Yet anger is so messy. I never seem to find the right words._ He’s not as quiet as people perceive him to be, he just prefers to think his words through, make his meaning plain and clear. He doesn’t have Yusuf’s gift for poetry, so he opts for clarity. And yet, when emotions run high that clarity escapes him. Not even slipping back to his mother tongue, Liguarian still easy on his tongue even after all these years, is enough to clearly untangle the mess residing in his mind. His sharpshooter mind, which can usually picture an entire situation from a bird's eye view, strategic points and cleared entrances plain as day doesn’t translate to an argument with the love of his life. How easy it would be if he could **get higher than those planes can fly** and watch it all, as if from the sky, **where the stars do not take sides.** If only he could see it from an objective perspective.

He snorts to himself and slides the garlic into the pot. He’s had too many philosophical discussions to accept _objectivity_ as an answer. There’s no such thing, much less in arguments with the other half of his soul.

As if summoned by his thoughts, Joe appears on the doorway. The fingers drumming on the door frame are the only tell of his anxiety.

“Help me with the stirring,” Nicky asks, an olive branch. “Tesoro,” he adds, because he’s halfway through forgiving him already.

They work side by side in silence for a few minutes before Nicky speaks again. He always speaks first in these moments, Joe knows better than to fill them with grand words when their emotions are sensitive.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled,” he keeps his eyes on his working hands. The words come easier when he’s busy. Driving a car, chopping ingredients, even knitting. So different to his love who focuses so intensely the whole world fades away except from the object of his interest. Nicky has been the focus of that attention for hundreds of years and it still catches him off guard sometimes. “I’ve been having nightmares again,” he confesses. Kozak’s torture is still fresh in their past, Nile’s acclimatization and Andy’s new mortality have taken precedent over all of their agendas. He’s been neglecting himself. Joe won’t like that, he knows, which is why he’s been foolishly pushing it back even more.

“What about?” Joe asks. Their lives have more than provided them with a repertoire. 

The other side of the coin. The blood, the pain, the suffering, the counterpart to the love, the tenderness, the happiness. _The side Booker never got._ His words still circle his mind: _‘you and Nicky always had each other’._

“Everything. Kozack, the trenches, what happened, what could have happened.” Andy dead from a stray bullet in the lab. Joe, laying lifeless in that cot. Nile as well now. “Even Jerusalem. It piles up, **and then it's just too much,** ” his breath catches, the images too vivid in his mind. Joe’s hand leaves the spoon he’s been using to stir and curls in the back of his neck. **“The streets, they still run with blood** in my dreams,” he whispers. The sack of Jerusalem still hurts the most. The guilt has eased over the centuries, he’s done penance in more ways he can count, he’s found his calling and let himself accept which part of it all was truly his fault and which were greedy men’s, drunk on power and delusions. Copley’s wall, as much of a confirmation of his beliefs as it had been, has also resurfaced too many memories. “I let it get to me. With everything that has been going on I thought it would pass. They always pass, but it got the best of me, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, my heart, I shouldn’t have insisted either. I know better than to try to carve words out of you,” he smiles, small and tentative.

“We can talk about it tonight,” he concedes, his smile just as small. The talk will be as beneficial for Joe as it’ll be for him. He leans in and kisses him softly.

Joe’s words from the armoured van circle his mind: ‘ _his kiss still trills me even after a millennia’._ He grins into the warm pressure of his lover’s lips. It doesn’t matter that they always end here, it doesn’t make the journey any less precious.

* * *

The sun rises on the window, turning the previously blue landscape into hues of red and gold. Sunlight skates over the bare planes of Yusuf’s back and Nicolò studies it, keeping track of the minutes as it reaches each of his lover’s freckles. He has memorized their constellation with caresses and kisses more times than he can remember. If he ever does venture into the visual arts he thinks he can probably draw them from memory.

He’s been awake for at least an hour already, while Yusuf has barely stirred. He doesn’t mind the relative solitude, instead relishes in the quiet contemplation. There’s something about his lover sleeping that he’s never been able to express. So **he lets him sleep, and as he does his held breath fills the room with love. It hurts in ways he can't describe. His heart bends and breaks so many, many times** at the tender sight of his sleeping lover. He has to concede to the French their petit mort as he does feel like he dies every night he’s with Yusuf, **and is born again with each sunrise.**

Yusuf stirs, his back arching with a heavy breath as consciousness returns to him. Nicolò almost feels a pang of mourning at the moment lost. As his love blinks awake, his first conscious action being to cast his eyes searching for him, the subtle grief leaves him.

“Good morning, my heart,” he whispers, breath short at the sight of a sleepy Yusuf. Despite being half in Morpheus' arms, he smiles dazzlingly to him in greeting. His answering hum resonates deep in his chest. With a grunt, he pushes himself towards the only pair of arms he really wants to sleep in. 

Nicolò lets him arrange himself over him, body sleep warm and messed curls ticking his nose. His heart feels about to burst with the love in his soul. 

He loves to watch Yusuf sleep. He’s confessed that so many times. Andy knows never to ask him to wake his love up if it’s a time sensitive reason. He always hesitates to break that spell. He gets distracted, like he does now by the soft rise and fall of his hard chest, the play of his eyelashes on his cheeks or even the vulnerable arch of the sole of his feet where they peak from underneath the sheets. 

In the early hours of the morning, with Yusuf warm and plaintive in his arms, Nicolò feels as close to reverent as he’s ever had.

* * *

  
  


**Funerals were held all over the city** for **the youth bleeding in the square.** Their blood lingers on the cobblestones. They stood solemn as the procession marched, fury barely restrained. 

It had been a terrible job. They had been hired to help defend a city as mercenaries from an invading force. Only to have to contend with useless generals. Sons of rich men only given the position for their last names and nothing to do with their capacity. The casualties had been too high.

They’re regarding the local Lord’s house, taking in the guard’s patrols as the sun dips down the sky.

The echoes of the battle keep ringing in his ears, phantom images flash before his eyes. The banners swinging in the breeze. The air had been thick with smoke in the street **and women raged as old men fumbled and cried.** Their houses and livelihoods going up in flames due to their masters' incompetence and greed.

Reckoning is coming, he knows. They’re not the only ones who are brimming with fury. Even those who are too numb at the moment to process this will be finding themselves searching for a target soon.

The revolt starts as the sun sinks in the horizon, staining the sky crimson as an omen of what’s to come. They infiltrate their ex-employers home easily. Their personal army wasn’t at its best before the fight, which is why he opted for mercenaries, and they’re simply too competent to be left out.

Nicolò regards the interior with a curled lip of distaste. The riches he prioritized over his own people. His orders still rang in his ears: ‘ _Get the doors, close them, don’t let them in! They’ll take it all’._ The enemy's forces never got to breach the doors, he wasn’t screaming about enemy pillagers.

The streets are starting to awaken. The air is still heavy from the smoke and the incense. The night breeze makes the torch dance, casting dancing shadows on the walls. They slip between them, ghosts in the dark.

They find the man in his quarters, laid over silk embroidered cushions, obsessively going over his prized jewels. The rosaries and crucifix inlaid with pearls catch the light as they enter. One of those alone could pay for the reconstruction of half the town. He’ll never give them away, they know. They know too much. They’ve met too many men and women just like him.

Nicolò feels tired. 

“Good evening, sire,” Quýnh’s voice cuts like one of her arrows through the hollow chamber.

The man scrambles in fear at the sight of them, hands still clutching the riches.

“You’ve come to rob me! I _knew_ it! I never should have trusted mercenaries.”

“You’re right,” Yusuf interjects, his long curved sword glinting in the night. “You should never trust mercenaries, some of them come with a free conscience attached.”

“I don’t care what you want, you’ll have to kill me to get it,” he stands firm. _Greedy 'till the end._

“We’ve not come to kill you,” Nicolò’s voice is cold. The tongue he’s speaking, a cousin of his native Liguarian usually softens his deep voice, but it’s not enough to hide the ice in his veins. “We’ve come to see for the wishes of the people.”

“Do I look like I care about the wishes of the people? They do nothing but grovel and fail to pay their dues. They’re nothing but leeches. Damn whatever happens to them!” He spits the words.

Andy hums, her axe loose and comfortable in her hand, as familiar as an extension of her own arm.

“Then you won’t mind if we linger to give them what they want,” she reasons.

“As long as it doesn’t bother me,” his eyes track them as they near. They shine in the low light and Nicolò suspects he might even be drunk. His people lose their homes and he finds merriment at the bottom of his cup. 

Nicolò chooses to believe in the good of people. They all do. Men like this one are nothing but a bitter, unsurprising reminder of what the worst of people can be. 

He really wishes the reminders wouldn’t come so often.

Quýnh circles the man, going to open the door to the balcony. The night sounds of the crowd outside flood into the room. They’re quiet compared to the clashes of the battle the previous day, yet hide much more pain.

“What-” his words cut off as Yusuf raises his sword and presses it softly to his chest. Enough to bite but not to draw blood. 

“To the balcony.”

The man doesn’t protest this time. 

“What are you doing?” he asks, brow glistening with nervous sweat when the voices start to grow agitated and angry at the sight of him. 

“We’re giving them what they want,” Quýnh replies, tone nonchalant to the point of being unnerving.

“What’s that?” his voice quivers.

“You.” Nicolò cocks his head to the side, face impassive.

“But I- what-” 

**“We're sorry, we thought you didn't care,”** Andy’s smirk is as sharp as her axe. “This won’t bother you,” she promises.

“You won’t be alive enough to care,” Nicolò finishes her thought before with one firm push toppling him over the railing. 

* * *

  
  


Nicolò blinks awake to an empty bed. The sunlight burns on his sensitive eyes. The wine’s aftertaste won’t last long, though he doubts it’s that what’s making him miserable. Nicolò di Genova also wakes up to dread, corrosive and churning in his gut. 

The memories of the previous night cut like a knife. He curls into himself, as if he can protect his own heart with his body.

He wonders how long he has to wallow in his misery. He wonders how long he has to recall the feel of Yusuf’s curls tangled in his fingers, the taste of his skin in his tongue before the man returns and he has to act like nothing happened.

He really thought he could win against whatever power made them like this and brought them together. He thought he could win against this with a tumble, a frantic, desperate consumption of that that has been eating at him for decades and then it’d be over. In his desperation he could almost convince himself at the time that Yusuf’s eyes and hands spoke the same frantic prayer.

He doesn’t dare weep like he wants to, settles for a frustrated and choked scream against the pillow that still smells like the man he loves.

 ** _And how does it feel now you've scratched that itch?_** He sneers at himself. **_How does it feel?_** _You could have left this wound to heal but you went and_ ** _pulled out all your stitches._** _You really thought a fuck would be enough? To get over the only man in this world who accepts you?_

**Hubris is a bitch.**

The door creaks as it opens and Nicolò pretends to be asleep out of panic. Maybe if he hides from his mistakes they won’t find him.

“Nicolò, wake up,” Yusuf’s voice is soft in this language. 

Nicolò curses himself for teaching it to him. If he’d known what sensations his native language in Yusuf’s mouth would illicit in him he would have never breathed a word of it to him. They had been doing well enough with hand gestures, what need did they have for spoken speech? But then again, he never would have heard Yusuf’s poetry otherwise. That alone makes all the other agonies worth it. Some types of aches can be exquisite, he’s discovered.

He’s grown up around the idea of sacrifice, of pain as an offering and an act of service. He wonders if this is what the priests and holy men meant. This feeling of being willing to give it all for someone. Even if the pain came from their own hand.

He’d let Yusuf plunge a knife into his heart if it meant he could look into his starred eyes one more time.

The intensity of these feelings scare him. He’s been to war, seen the worst of humanity but Yusuf smiles at him **and** ** _then_** **it's just too much. The streets, they still run with blood i** n his life and his worst fear is for the man sitting behind him.

“Nicolò, wake up,” he repeats, one hand going to trail the bare skin of his back. 

That’s worse. The touch is too tender. It’s all they didn’t get the previous night and what he so desperately wants. All Nicolò’s really earned himself is memories to haunt him for an eternity. He could try to lose himself in **a hundred arms,** for **a hundred years** but he already knows they’ll never be the ones he wants. 

**“** I’m here, **”** he confesses, uncurling himself and revealing his face, feelings splayed into every sharp line of his features and changing shade of his eyes. **_You can always find me here._**

“There you are,” Yusuf smiles, as bright as the sun. “I was starting to worry I had lost you to Morpheus,” he jokes, and some desperate part of Nicolò wants to reassure him, _his are not the arms I wanna get lost in._ “I went to the market after prayer, found some of those fruits you like. I meant to be earlier but this old woman wanted to chat and needed help with her purchases-” Yusuf keeps talking, getting his goods arranged on the table and regaling him with stories and comments on each. Only Yusuf could make something as simple as a visit to the market an adventure worth retelling in detail.

Nicolò watches from the bed, his heart both brimming with love and compressed with dread. He hates himself for risking this for something he could never feasibly have. _Why did I have to be so greedy?_ He’s thankful his friend is acting like nothing has changed. 

Yusuf turns around, one of the fruits held in his hand, a knife in the other. Nicolò might not be the poet but he’s nevertheless struck by the image. 

There is Yusuf, on one hand holding a fruit Nicolò has only mentioned once or twice liking, because he always pays attention. He’s always thinking of others before himself. On the other, the knife glints in the morning light. It’s both a reminder of how they met and how far they have come that the sight doesn’t worry him and a reminder of how one way or the other, Yusuf has always held Nicolò’s life in his hands. 

He takes a seat next to him. His body radiates warmth over Nicolò’s still bare skin. He wishes he could cover himself, find some physical protection to mask his emotional vulnerability. Yusuf takes the knife and cuts a piece, unconcerned as the juice stains his hand and trails down his wrist. He twists the blade around so he can delicately take the slice.

He looks at Nicolò then, intent. His eyes are dark pools, entrancing even as they seem amused. He offers it out to Nicolò but stops his attempt at grabbing it with a shake of the head. Slowly and deliberately, he rises it to Nicolò’s mouth.

Pulse galloping in his veins, feeling as he’s free-falling, Nicolò leans in and allows him to feed it to him. It’s the best slice he’s ever eaten in his life. 

“I’m glad you were still in bed. You rarely sleep in and I really wanted to do this,” Yusuf says. He cuts another piece and feeds it to Nicolò again before taking a much smaller piece for himself. “I know I should have stayed, but we were out of supplies and I wanted to start the day with something sweet.”

He grins then, with an edge of mischief Nicolò has become familiar with. His throat dries despite the juicy fruit he just ate. Yusuf is leaning in. Lips still stretched in a smile. 

He kisses him.

The kiss is sweet from the fruit and chaste enough at first that Nicolò can catch his bearings. As Yusuf deepens it, the sweet flavour gives way and he can taste _Yusuf_ , unique and so novel. Memories from the previous night resurface, whispered Arabic he was too addled to make sense off and the realization dawns on him.

 _He feels the same way,_ he thinks, gasping in time with the knowledge and a hand that skates over his side, skittering over his ticklish spots. He reigns in a surprised squeal but Yusuf’s breathy chuckle lets him know he’ll be getting back to that discovery sometime soon.

His hands shake as they find their way to Yusuf’s face, cradling his beard. The curls are soft under his palms and the tips of his fingers skim the cloth of his head wrapping. Yusuf brings their hands to his wrist, driving them away from his face so he can interlace their fingers together.

Nicolò’s heart is about to burst at the seams. His eyes feel wet, he doesn’t dare open them in case he finds himself back in the empty bed, with these events nothing more than a fanciful dream.

 _Please let this be real,_ he wishes fervently. **_And Lord, don't let me break this,_** it feels so fragile in his arms, tentative in the way soft Yusuf kisses him, so at odds with their frantic night. **_Let me hold it lightly, give me arms to pray with,_** _for what is more worthy of my devotion than the man in front of me,_ ** _instead of ones that hold too tightly._**

Yet Yusuf has never been a man of half measures. Nicolò should have known from his poetry and proclamations he would never give himself halfheartedly.

As they draw apart, foreheads resting against the other while they gather their breath, Yusuf brings their joined hands to his lips and kisses his both palms.

“Nicolò, my love, I’ve been wanting to do that since Venice,” he confesses, eyes filled with happiness. Nicolò’s overcome; it’s been almost a decade since they visited the city.

“ **Oh** ,” is all he manages. “I’ve been in love with you since the desert."

Yusuf’s eyes snap to his, surprise evident.

“ **Oh** ,” he echoes him, a second of silence hangs suspended between them before they both surge forwards, lips meeting in the middle in a fierce kiss.

All this time, they’ve been quietly loving each other, keeping it to themselves. Not anymore, their secrets are out. And _eternity_ awaits.

 **_Oh_ ** **.**

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you feel like dropping a kudo or sharing your thoughts I always reply!  
> I'm on tumblr [my tumblr](https://quiquimora.tumblr.com) if you wanna come by to chat TOG as well


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